As is known in the art, collaborative systems refer to a class of systems in which multiple users participate in a particular activity (e.g. a business meeting, a meeting to solve an engineering problem, a lecture, etc.).
As is also known, the emergence of high speed communication networks and improved visualization techniques provide the foundation for making such computer based collaboration practical. Various collaboration tools and conferencing systems have been developed by academic institutions, office system manufacturers and communication companies.
Various research in the area of computer mediated communication includes multiple disciplines and three diverse focus areas have been identified as emerging in this research field: (1) Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS); (2) Video Conferencing; and (3) Shared social spaces. Each of these groups represents a different approach to computer mediated communication.
EMS research focuses on the interaction process and decision support tools for the interaction process. Video conferencing research is concerned with transmitting multi-media data between participants (especially audio and video data). The shared social spaces perspective is concerned with enabling interaction and experience across distance and providing awareness and persistence within a virtual world.
Electronic meeting systems encompass a large body of research dedicated to the support of participants in traditional interaction settings. The GroupSystems EMS and the Xerox Parc Collab project are among the first such systems developed. Both systems have tools that structure brainstorming and problem solving processes and enforce interaction controls on the participants within the shared media. However, the control of the floor in a discussion is governed by physical meeting cues since all participants are co-located.
Initial research on video conferencing focused on the technical aspects of transmitting video and audio data among individuals. Much of the initial work was constrained to two-person interactions and a large portion of the work utilized a telephony paradigm for the interaction. Further developments have occurred rapidly in this field and most modern systems such as Microsoft NetMeeting, Intel Proshare, PictureTel, and SGI Inperson provide multi-person interaction and have extended audio and video services to include shared whiteboards, editors and browsers. However, these conferencing systems lack any appropriate concurrency control mechanisms and are cumbersome to use for medium or large size work groups.
The final area of research of telepresence is devoted to the study of virtual communities and interaction in a virtual environment. Several tools have been developed to provide awareness, persistence, and interaction in cyberspace. The two leading research efforts in this field are TeamRooms and Worlds. The primary concern of these systems is in the representation of physical concepts of space and place in the virtual world. The environments developed provide richer interaction contexts, but are currently constrained by network bandwidth and display technology.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/540,946, entitled Collaborative Agent Interaction Control and Synchronization System, filed Mar. 31, 2000, which application claims the benefit of application No. 60/127,672 filed Apr. 2, 1999 under 35 U.S.C. 119(e), both of which applications are assigned to the same assignee as this patent application and are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, teaches a collaborative agent interaction control and synchronization system. The collaborative system interprets a physical interaction environment and represents the physical interaction environment as a virtual environment and also exploits the characteristics of the communication medium. This is accomplished through the deconstruction of group interaction into its core elements and the translation of these elements into computational representations. In addition, the system models facilitation processes in order to allow intelligent agent manipulation of the interaction process. With this particular arrangement, a system for allowing individuals to hold interactions over a network and work together in a coordinated fashion on shared design problems is provided.
It should be recognized that EMS systems can provide connectivity between interaction participants having a variety of processing devices with a variety of graphical displays or user interfaces. The processing devices include, but are not limited to, desktop computers, laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless telephones, and pagers. Since each interaction participant can have a different field of view on their respective user interface, confusion can result as the interaction participants interact. The confusion can result in increased interaction time as participants attempt to understand what other participants are seeing or doing on their respective user interfaces.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system that allows individuals to hold interactions over a network and work together in a coordinated fashion on shared problems. It would also be desirable to have a system that provides automated facilitation services, that supports a variety of interaction structures, and that provides floor control policies to dynamically control the transition of the speaking state (the floor) from one participant to another (floor control policies). It would also be desirable to provide a system that can provide optimal views for interaction participants having dissimilar fields of view on their respective user interface.